I always love watching this video because his talk is very funny.

A quote from Understanding this Chinese Generation:

“Here is a serious issue to contemplate on. Most of the work you do are concerned with economic developments. This is a phenomenon common to both the East and West – everything is about the economy. I find it especially amusing that China is now putting all her energy on the economy. This is not the road to true prosperity. Historically China always subscribed to the doctrine that believes in having better culture and governance to resolve economic issues, to make even distribution of wealth and to maintain social stability. In the West, since the 16th century, the approach has been one attempting to resolve political and cultural issues by economic means alone, as expounded by the doctrines of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Keynes and their followers. These are two different approaches and one does not necessarily conflict with each other.

Ever since China subscribed to the Western doctrines, in particular the ideas of Keynes, the whole country is moving down the road of chasing money. Consumption is encouraged because it creates demand and employment. Therefore there is a good market for the management disciplines you teach. I always joked that the best way to accelerate consumption is to have wars everyday. War is the biggest of all consumptions.

What we lack today is a new school of thought that can assimilate both the Eastern and Western approaches in order to lead the world into a new era. If we continue the way it is there will be dire consequences.”

I always recommend the Tibetan 9-bottled wind practice for cultivators. It involves holding your breath for as long as possible and is an assist to cultivation in the early stages of the path.

Well the world record holder’s method for holding their breath — shown here doing so for nearly 17 minutes under water in front of Oprah — explains his method of khumbhaka to Oprah and the audience.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/10/30/how-to-hold-your-breath/

Pay attention to the fact that at the end when he cannot hold any longer, he says he practices a type of emptiness meditation.

That’s the key — letting go of both mind and body. He looks extremely healthy and well balanced, just like a martial artist, because he has somewhat opened up his channels. Practicing emptiness meditation would in all likelihood change his appearance to an even lighter complexion over time.

Here are his steps though you can read more on the blog post.

The Steps:

1:30 deep breathing
1:15 purging (if you feel like you’re going to pass out, do it less intensely)

Hold breath for target 1:30, no more
After 1:30:
Take 3 semi-purge breaths

1:30 deep breathing
1:30 purging

Hold breath for target 2:30, no more
After 2:30
Take 3 semi-purge breaths

2:00 deep breathing
1:45 purging

Hold breath for as long as possible
After exhalation:
Take 3-10 hard semi-purge breaths until your recover

I always tell people to THINK. They want to succeed in meditation and spirituality, but the field has so many nebulous claims that you need logic to think things through. Thus I tell them to sharpen their wits on real world topics. That’s the reason I bring up real world politics all the time. THINK here, don’t put “love the whole way round” on issues and blind yourself to what’s going on.

If you fail at making the right conclusions on real world issues, then to me I give you little chance to really be able to differentiate so many claims in the spiritual field. You will just be captured by prejudices of your race, religion, country and so on.

So here’s something to think about — draw your own conclusions:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/rust-discovered-bank-russia-issued-999-gold-coins

IF THE STORY IS TRUE, then the Russians are diluting their gold, plain and simple. They either want to make more money, or there is not enough gold to be put in the coins, or corruption is going on somewhere and higher ups didn’t know. There are a lot of possibilities, so drop the conformity view they teach kids in school today, QUESTION and THINK …

Could 100% pure gold rust? No! So the reason is due to something else. And if the Russians are doing this, are others?

There has been much writing over the last several years about central bank gold stocks dwindling, and this calls that to mind.

I’ve read many pundits and the conclusion is there’s a 50:50 chance we’ll have a double dip recession. I think it’s more like 60:40 because real jobs cannot come back. Furthermore, the housing stimulus is over.

The BP oil well will probably keep spilling for another few months simply because it happened before, and it took 8 months to fix the problem … in shallower water with the same techniques they’re trying today.

Don’t believe me? Watch this video …

The Times has just presented an article on the declining age of puberty:

Puberty Article

In the 1800’s puberty for girls and boys was around 15 and 17 years of age, respectively.

In the 1960’s, the ages were determined to be around 12 for girls and 14 for boys. These are the ages that girls first start getting their period, and the age when the voices of boys start to break and they experience a growth spurt.

The new findings are that girls are starting puberty, including breast development, at age 9 (9 years and 10 months on average, which is a full one year ealier than the last time the study was done about 15 years ago). Many boys drop out of choir in England because their voices are now breaking at around ages 11-12!

Some people say this is because of hormone-like substances in the food chain (I agree), and others simply because of a better diet.

It’s interesting to note that over 2,000 years Shakyamuni Buddha foretold, through samadhi insight, that the age of puberty for women would eventually drop to around 5 years of age for this world. He also said that in the far future the world would become so toxic and polluted that almost any item could be used to kill/harm another person, and the Gulf Oil spill illustrates how we are slowly heading in that direction. Amazing predictions from 2,000+ years ago, especially when you consider the environmental circumstances of that era.

This is just an interesting bit of science. What did the Big Bang sound like? Well, scientists have created a little bang, and here is a sound recording of the sound:

http://www.newscientist.com/articlevideo/dn18998/89322524001-what-does-the-hottest-matter-ever-made-sound-like.html

I first learned about the possibility of using nuclear bombs for underwater construction when I listened to one of the interviews of Edward Teller on Peoples Archive. He was talking about building harbors in Alaska using nuclear charges.

Well, it occurred to me that this is probably going to be the only way to close off the BP oil leak which is coming out of the ground with such pressure that nothing seems to thwart it. There’s even a second leak bigger than the first, or so this article says. Thus, this story doesn’t surprise me.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0529/energy-expert-nuke-oil-leak/

I’ve often sat in my room trying to brainstorm ways to get rid of that giant floating island of plastic the size of Texas that is now floating in the Pacific. Shakyamuni Buddha often said that the world would become toxic to an extreme degree and it’s no lie that our environmental ways are poisoning the planet. The BP spill is an example, but this one represents an even larger long term danger.

Forget all this emphasis on global warming — this is the problem we should be working on. Silly me, I kept envisoning ships sweeping the ocean with nets between them to corral the waste so that it could be compacted and towed somewhere, but also knew it wouldn’t work because people would have already suggested this methodology. Finally I found something that the billionaires of the world should finance as a try:

http://www.rense.com/general90/rid.htm

Start your ideas swirling after reading about the Thermal Conversion Process perfected by a New York company, Changing World Technologies.

And speaking about saving the oceans, Kevin Costner, the actor, has funded to the tune of over $20M the development of barges that suck up oil spills in water, spin the water in a centrifuge, and separate out the oil from the water for a 99% clean discharge … a way to help clean up ocean oil spills. This is exactly the type of free thinking, far thinking, important thinking that I always urge people to do, especially the superrich looking for ways to spend their monies on charity.

This is also where I get very disappointed because the people best positioned to invest in something like this are the oil companies themselves and the billionaires of the world and both did nothing. I’ve always been trying to figure out a way to clean oil spills from the ocean and here we have an actor spending his own funds to do so, which to me is an embarassment of the mega-rich:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011925837_oilkevin22.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bp-calls-in-costners-26m-vacuum-cleaners-to-mop-up-huge-oil-spill-1979976.html

The growing disasters over the next few decades will not just be oil spills, but seed/crop disasters caused by unwise policies of Monsanto and other companies. These catastrophes are happening before our very eyes, just like the banking crisis, and when they occur it will be too late for legislation. “We didn’t know. The science said __” will be all the rage of officials trying to cover their butts. I warned you of the recession. Don’t say I didn’t wan you about this.

I like this quote I just read from Dr. Matt Ridley, ex-Economist editor and author of The Rational Optimist. In reviewing history, he wrote the following … which makes you once again realize that there is no yang, or good, without yin, or bad:

“Empires bought stability at the price of creating a parasitic court; monotheistic religions bought social cohesion at the expense of a parasitic priestly class; nationalism bought power at the expense of a parasitic military; socialism bought equality at the price of a parasitic bureaucracy; capitalism bought efficiency at the price of parasitic financiers.”

Only great minds can read this This is weird, but interesting!

If you can raed this, you have a sgtrane mnid too

Can you raed this? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is that the frsit and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it whotuit a pboerlm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! If you can raed this forwrad it

A rare type of western sidereal astrology is practiced by Ken Bowser, several cuts above the typical western astrologer in terms of his knowledge about astrology. His approach is VERY different than a typical western astrologer.

You can find out more about his style and readings by investigating westernsiderealastrology.com

His other contact information, found on his site:

Ken Bowser
1130 Jeffersion St. NE
Minneapolis, MN 55413
612-331-1475.
WesternSiderealAstrology.com

Someone who had bedbugs wrote this and sent to me on how he finally got rid of them. Since it might be of use to someone out there, I’m posting it on the web for everyone to make one man’s experience publicly available.

1. diatomaceous earth – WORKED. it scratches the heck out of them and makes them
slow and stupid, it was much easier to kill them, they were not as good about
hiding, and when they would come to bite we could almost always feel them (as
opposed to before, when we could only feel the bite a while after they left) and
it’s pretty dang cheap. it works best combined with deep cleaning.

2. deep cleaning – absolute necessity. Use a vacuum, suck up every little corner
nook and cranny. We found deep cleaning not to be enough by itsself though, there
were just too many areas they could hide in. Get rid of every mattress and couch
they have been in, it’s no use trying to save the furniture. We would put the
diatomaceous earth down, wait a day then vacuum, then put the earth down again and
repeat until they disappeared.

3. pesticides/herbicides – BIG NO. the only one proven to kill them is ddt, which
will also kill you, and is illegal in america.

4. rubbing alcohol to keep them away from things- YEAH RIGHT. they always made it up
anyway. i caught a few and poured rubbing alcohol on them, the next day they were
still fine. doesn’t work

5. not killing them because you are a buddhist and think killing is wrong, even bugs
- and what about the health of your family, (no one with bed bugs gets a good nights
sleep) and the health of your neighbors family? they spread like the plague, they
invade your house and attack, suck your blood all ninja-like in the night when you
can’t see them. 1 female can have 3 hundred babies, who can live up to a year and a
half without eating, waiting for the chance to eat just once and make more babies.
these are not the bugs you gently lay outside, they will come back or they will go
find your neighbor.

Carol Reed’s “The Third Man” is a film that stars Orson Welles. You’ve heard the theme song for the movie a million times but probably didn’t know it:

What strikes me is one of the quotes from the film, probably the most famous:

“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

In times of crisis they say heroes arise.  That’s the meaning. The same lesson comes from Chinese and Roman cutlure as well.

And now for something fun and completely different to break up your day ….

And now for the real thing … listen for the lyrics that they left out when Dean Martin or Gérard Darmon sings …

I know people love Micheale Buble but Dean Martin did an excellent job with SWAY …

And when I want a little fun I like to watch this now and then … their story is inspiring:

People who meditate tend to become a little too serious. Relax and enjoy culture now and then. That’s the lesson.